Providing mating spur toothings in wheel hub/rotary joint assemblies is known; for example, a wheel hub/rotary joint assembly is disclosed in DE 197 51 855 C1 in which the outer joint portion is configured to be disc-shaped. An annular body, which, on the one hand, is connected to the outer joint portion by means of a spur toothing and, on the other hand, is non-rotatably connected to the wheel hub by means of a longitudinal toothing, is provided for torque transmission on to the wheel hub. The outer joint portion and the annular body are axially attached to each other by means of a retaining ring. With respect to the wheel hub, the annular body is axially attached by forming a sleeve-shaped portion of the wheel hub, with the wheel bearing being axially biased by the annular body.
A wheel hub/rotary joint assembly using a spur toothing, in which the wheel hub has a sleeve portion with a bead that axially fixes a bearing inner ring of the wheel bearing, is also known from DE 36 36 243 A1. On its end, the bead has a spur toothing that meshes with a corresponding equal and opposite spur toothing on the outer joint portion for torque transmission. The two spur toothings lie in a common radial plane.
Usually, when designing the teeth, a constructional design commonly known as Hirth-type toothing is used. This toothing was invented by Dr. Albert Hirth and patented by DE 440 816. This Hirth-type toothing is characterized in that the teeth of the spur toothing each have one meshing edge forming a first straight line and tooth troughs, which correspond to the teeth when meshing, each form a second straight line, with the straight lines intersecting on the axis of rotation in one point.
DE 10 2005 054 283 B4 also employs the above-described Hirth-type toothing on the components of the wheel hub/rotary joint assembly. Here, a radially outer part of the teeth of the toothings participating in the meshing are to run ahead in the axial direction, which means that, in the case of an axial screw connection of the two toothings, they first contact each other radially on the outside, and the teeth completely mesh with each other only after the attachment screw has been fully tightened. This is achieved by the point of intersection of the above-described straight line of the one toothing and the point of intersection of the counter-toothing not coinciding, but by both points of intersection being situated offset to each other on the axis of rotation. This approach is disadvantageous in that the degree of meshing in the radially inner area greatly depends on how strongly the two toothings are biased against each other so that a local overload in the inner area cannot be avoided. After several tests, a design of a toothing has proven to have particularly surprising load-bearing capacity, in which the point of intersection of the above-mentioned meshing edge line and the tooth trough line of a tooth is precisely not situated on the axis of rotation, but, according to the disclosure, offset to it.